Kate and I are in New York City with our granddaughter, Heather. We are having a great time, but I am finding it challenging to keep up with Kate. I’ve had several scares on the trip.
The first one occurred in the Charlotte airport. Our gate was on a small concourse (12-14 gates). Kate wanted to walk while we waited for plane. Heather and I stayed behind. In about 15-20 minutes, the gate attendant announced that we would start boarding in 10 minutes. We couldn’t see Kate. anywhere. Twice I walked the entire concourse. Then I went to the central terminal and didn’t see her. I returned to the gate to see about paging her. They would only page outside. Finally, she came strolling toward our gate. She had simply walked to someplace outside our concourse and had no sense of time. She said she never felt lost.
The next time was a minor incident at the Empire State Building. Heather and I were on the down escalator when I looked back to see Kate was not with us. I ran up the escalator and found her. She had not seen us get on. She was having the same emotional reaction as we were. Fortunately, this was just a moment.
The last incident as we neared the end of a tour of Rockefeller Center. We lost her when the group went inside, and she didn’t follow. The big problem was that we didn’t miss her for another 15 minutes when the tour ended. I received a telephone call from a Missouri number. The tour was just ending, and I didn’t answer because I thought it was a wrong number. Then I saw that I had a message and called the number. It was Kate. She had borrowed a phone and said that she was at the statue of Prometheus. She had been helped by an employee. I tried to keep my cool but was in quite a panic. The good thing is that she can still remember my phone number and didn’t hesitate to ask someone about using his phone.
